Akhenaten: A Historian's View

By Ronald T. Ridley

A groundbreaking historiography of the reign of Akhenaten
More ink has probably been spilled on Akhenaten and his times (‘the Amarna Period’) than any other figure from ancient Egypt, with a vast range of interpretations and theories that can leave the uninitiated utterly bewildered. 
Against this background, Akhenaten: A Historian’s View examines what scholars have said over the years regarding key aspects of the period, to produce a ‘history of histories,’ exploring exactly how various chains of arguments were arrived at—and how houses of cards thus erected have subsequently come tumbling down. In particular, it teases out ideas based on solid documentation from those based on theory and fancy, and tracks ways in which new evidence became available, how it was interpreted, and how it fed—or didn't—into the big picture. 
This book thus fills a major gap in the literature of the Amarna Period and also contributes to the wider, and much neglected, field of the historiography of ancient Egypt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781617979446

Ronald T. Ridley

Ronald T. Ridley is professor emeritus at the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne. He is the author of twenty books and over one hundred articles. His main interest is the history of the ancient world, particularly Egypt and Rome.

Book preview

Akhenaten

Akhenaten

A HISTORIAN’S VIEW

Ronald T. Ridley

The American University in Cairo Press

Cairo New York

This electronic edition published in 2019

The American University in Cairo Press

113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2019 by Ronald T. Ridley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 977 416 793 5

eISBN 978 1 61797 944 6

Version 1

To the Memory of

Norman de Garis Davies (1865–1941), indefatigable recorder,

Cyril Aldred (1914–1991), inspiring biographer,

William Murnane (1945–2000), great Amarnan scholar, and

John Albert Wilson (1899–1976), my fist inspiration in Egyptology

Most of what is written about the momentous events in

the history of the Amarna Period in our secondary sources

is speculation

—Geoffrey Martin, The Hidden.

Tombs of Memphis

Contents

preface

abbreviations

maps

1.    Akhenaten: Fashion, Fantasy, and Fact

2.    The Theban Years

3.    Akhet-Aten: The Horizon of the Aten

4.    The Cult of the Aten

5.    Two Queens

6.    An Empire Lost?

7.    Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, and the End of Akhenaten’s Reign

8.    Two Royal Tombs

afterword

notes

bibliography

sources of images

Preface

This is, I believe, the first book about Akhenaten written not by an archaeologist, a philologist, or an art historian, but by a historian. What that means should become clear as the text progresses.

I have tried to document each statement with evidence. That can come from an amazing array of sources: epigraphic, archaeological, artistic, or literary. I confess that finding them has often caused me great pains; for example, others can refer simply to ‘a block from Hermopolis’ (there are thousands and thousands of them), or an object in the Louvre or in the Metropolitan (the same). They are identified here as exactly as possible.

Each chapter is subdivided with subheadings. In this way, I have tried to avoid a common feature of writing on Akhenaten: nothing is treated comprehensively in one place, but each topic is scattered throughout the text with multiple references. With my system, one should find a substantial discussion of any topic in one place, with adequate signposting.

Illustrations are vital evidence. They will be found at the most important point where they are discussed, not in erratic order or bunched together at various points.

As a historian, I am not competent to deal with art history. There is no chapter as such on Amarnan art. And there is no chapter on the infamous problem of a coregency between Akhenaten and his father. After oceans of ink being spilled, that has most recently been nonchalantly consigned to the ‘outdated matters/no longer of interest’ box.

There are two matters I should signal. First, I had hoped to present the essential primary sources drawn from both text and art directly in my own text, as historians like to do, but they are hidden in the endnotes. Second, I have given full names in the first reference to each person in each chapter, but used only surnames for subsequent references in that chapter. On another matter of names, I have generally called Akhenaten and Tutankhamun by those names, rather than switching to and from ‘Amenhotep IV’ and ‘Tutankhaten,’ although I have, on occasion, highlighted a particular occurrence of a name where it is necessary for the purposes of the narrative.

My sincerest gratitude must be expressed to the original publishers of the wonderful illustrations without which such a subject would be incomprehensible, and who have so generously allowed them to be reproduced here.

There are three women without whom this book would never have been published: my best editor, my wife Therese; Ingrid Barker, who impeccably transformed typescript into a digital version; and Salima Ikram, the essence of kindness.

Abbreviations

Map. 1. The Nile Valley.

Map. 2. Tell el-Amarna. The capital letters denote the boundary stelae of Akhet-Aten..

Map. 3. The Near East during the fourteenth century bc.

Map. 4. Thebes.

Map. 5. The temenos of Amun-Re at Karnak, highlighting the structures extant at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

For about one and a half centuries now, anyone interested in Egypt has been aware of a king either fascinating or alarming, depending on reactions. These extreme responses have arisen primarily because of his appearance—at least in some of his portraits—and his position in the religious history not only of Egypt, but also of the East. Modern reactions were prefigured by those of his contemporaries, including those who tried to obliterate him from history, but his brief reign has given its name to what is now the best-known period in Egyptian history.

We begin with three generalizations, put forth by several authors:

Few sovereigns have been so pitifully mistreated by posterity as Amenhotep IV; it seems that modern historians have been bent on worsening the curses with which the Theban priests have burdened his memory. Most wish to see in him only a lofty fanatic, others charge him with madness, others again state that he was a simple eunuch.¹

Of all the personalities of Egyptian antiquity, Akhenaten and Nefertiti are undoubtedly the most famous. The royal couple of Amarna exercise such a fascination that they are now part of Western cultural mythology. Seemingly so close to us, they represent the image of the ideal couple, touching in their adversity, struggling against the established strength of a traditionalist society, and attempting to establish a religion of love in a selfish world. The companion of a mystical king with fragile health, the queen moves us by her fidelity and her constant presence next to her frail husband. And then, Nefertiti is so beautiful. This vision is real, but it is a reality of the contemporary world that is always ready to find in the past the reflection of its hopes and ideals.²

Akhenaten is precisely one of those figures that tempt writers to go to extremes.³

Changing interpretations

Richard Lepsius (1810–84) must be acknowledged as the scholar who first, in 1851, understood the main lines of the history of Akhenaten, but he revealed no judgment.⁴

Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), first excavator at Amarna, was highly impressed by the man and his cult: Akkhenaten stands out as perhaps the most original thinker that ever lived in Egypt, and one of the greatest idealists of the world.⁵ If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system.⁶

Alexandre Moret (1868–1938), a student of Gaston Maspero (1846–1916) and historian of Egyptian society, religion, and law, painted a broad picture: If the reign of Akhenaten counts for little in the history of Egypt, it counts infinitely in the history of humanity.⁷

One of the most influential commentators was James Henry Breasted (1865–1935), founder of American Egyptology. Akhenaten was the first individual in history, the world’s first revolutionist, and the earliest idealist.

Consciously and deliberately, by intellectual process he gained his position, and then placed himself squarely in the face of tradition and swept it aside. He appeals to no myths, to no ancient and widely accepted versions of the domination of the gods, to no customs sanctified by centuries—he appeals only to the present and visible evidences of his god’s dominion, evidences open to all.⁸

Norman de Garis Davies (1865–1941), indefatigable copyist and publisher of tomb inscriptions, said that Akhenaten scarcely had the dignity of a heretic. His theology was ignored after his death, not refuted. . . . it was in undermining the unity of Egypt, the magnificence of her temple service, and her imperial prestige, that he most offended.⁹

The German excavator of Amarna Ludwig Borchardt (1863–1938) saw the Amarna period as a violent, bad exaggeration of good, old religious ideas, which throttled the possibility of their further development.¹⁰ His great rival Heinrich Schäfer (1868–1957), who paradoxically despised Amarnan art, saw the age as the Egyptian people’s imperishable claim to fame.¹¹ The Ramessides may have called him that criminal of Akhet-Aten, but one does not, he admonished, judge Socrates or Jesus by their judges.

For those who disapprove of Akhenaten, either his policies or his character, fantasy knows no bounds. According to Henry Hall (1873–1930) of the British Museum, he died possibly insane.¹² The Reverend James Baikie (1866–1931) judged that Akhenaten seems to have been the world’s first pacifist and that Egypt duly produced her great man, a man who in some respects is the greatest she ever produced. In 1923, that would have rung a bell with many. For Baikie, he was an idealist dreamer, undoubtedly a fanatic, but he was by no means a fool.¹³ Baikie also had to caution Wallis Budge (1857–1934), Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, who insinuated that Akhenaten may have been guilty of wholesale murders,¹⁴ though he admitted that there was no evidence to prove such a thing: It would be difficult to imagine a worse conclusive example of prejudice usurping the place of unbiassed judgement.¹⁵

Étienne Drioton (1889–1961), the last French director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, and Jacques Vandier (1904–73) of the Louvre declared Akhenaten to be a dreamer, incapable of concentrating his mind on the practical necessities of government.¹⁶ Jaroslav Černý (1898–1970), professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, similarly declared Akhenaten to be a dreamer and fanatic.¹⁷

Sir Alan Gardiner (1879–1963), the greatest English Egyptian philologist of his generation, wrote of Akhenaten’s fanatical determination: he was self willed but highly courageous, and Gardiner judged that it was "in the moral courage with which the reformer strove to sweep away the vast accumulation of mythological rubbish from the past that

Fig. 1. Cyril Aldred (1914–1991).

his true greatness lay; a negative greatness, no doubt, but one that has been unjustly denied him."¹⁸

The remarkable study, for many the foundation of the modern understanding of Akhenaten, by Cyril Aldred (1914–91, fig. 1) of the Royal Scottish Museum denied any revolution in Akhenaten’s politics or social character, but judged that his monotheism disorganised the machinery of government and brought his innovations to an inglorious end.¹⁹

A totally different view of Akhenaten was offered by the Russian Egyptologist Yuri Perepelkin (1903–82). His Secret of the Golden Coffin appeared in English translation in 1978, but the original Russian edition was published in 1968, a highly significant year in Soviet history. The king was least of all a complacent dreamer. . . . He was a strong willed formidable ruler, who ruthlessly eliminated those who defied his will. One can hear in that description the tanks rolling into Prague, but Perepelkin was also relying on a text from the tomb of Tutu,²⁰ which he translated as referring to scaffolds, swords, and fire. And he was impressed by the quarrying corvée²¹—as if this was previously unknown in Egyptian history. For him, Akhenaten was the most despotic of the pharaohs.²²

Frederick Giles described Akhenaten as an insane king who was allowed to rule by himself for only two and a half years [sic].²³ For Erich Hornung, Akhenaten was not a visionary but a methodical rationalist whose changes in logic for a few years anticipated Western modes of thought.²⁴

Most recently, a new obsession has taken hold. According to the Canadian archaeologist Donald Redford, Akhenaten was hideous to behold and enforced a rigid, coercive, rarefied monotheism. Although he was not a good administrator, it is admitted that he was a great poet and made an important contribution in art. Overall, however, he was a voluptuary and a totalitarian. Much attention is paid by Redford to Horemheb’s Edict of Reform,²⁵ and lurking over all is some amateur psychology: Akhenaten was ignored by his father, but was certainly close to his mother—and then the Aten became his father.²⁶

Fellow Canadian Ronald Leprohon also attempted to use the Edict of Reform, which dates from the beginning of Horemheb’s reign, to detail the inefficiency and corruption of Akhenaten’s time.²⁷ This ignores the fact that some thirteen years and the reigns of two pharaohs (Tutankhamun and Ay) had intervened. It is more instructive that the army was complicit in much of this inefficiency and corruption—and Horemheb had been a leading general all this time.

Herman Schlögl imagined that spies and informers must have denounced those who held fast to the ancestral gods—but then admitted that we have no precise information about such matters. One important text has often been used to paint a dark picture of the religious events of Akhenaten’s reign: the Restoration Decree of the boy king Tutankhamun.²⁸ Schlögl observed, however, that it asserted only that the temples were in ruins (read closed), not that the land was in economic or administrative crisis. The building program for Akhet-Aten was a success of the first rank, and new temples had been constructed all over the country. The so called new men had carried out their offices correctly.²⁹

Jan Assmann, the leading historian of Atenism, suggests that for the majority of Egyptians, the age of Amarna was one of destruction, persecution, suppression, and godlessness. His main evidence is Tutankhamun’s Restoration Stela. Amarna was a dreadful aberration, a traumatic experience.³⁰

Joyce Tyldesley, a biographer of Nefertiti, agrees with Redford, although she undermines Redford’s suggestion of totalitarianism which is also implied by Schlögl, by stating that there appears to have been little if any bloodshed in defence of the old gods.³¹ Marc Gabolde agrees: there was no dismantling of the judiciary, no persecution of individuals, no exploitation of the economy for the benefit of the autocrat and his circle, no reign of terror or violence. Tutankhamun’s decree criticizes only religious policies, and does not mention economic or social problems.³²

Nicholas Reeves has, nevertheless, reasserted the suggestion of dictatorship: In seventeen years of dictatorial rule, dominated by the paranoia of an Amonist conspiracy, the king had brought the country and its people to the very brink of disaster.³³

Such sentiments also infected Wolfgang Helck (1914–93), who begins with reference to dictatorship—as evidenced by exiles (EA 162) and barbed wire watchtowers.³⁴ Helck’s conclusion, however, bears no relationship to this bleak view of Akhenaten’s reign: it was instead an attempt to take a step on the way to a ‘modern’ world view, linked with freedom from the bonds of a tradition which had become incomprehensible.³⁵

‘Totalitarianism’

A clear pattern emerges from the early idealists to a more critical (albeit ambiguous) attitude, culminating by the 1980s in a very negative view, using words like ‘totalitarian’ and ‘dictator.’

‘Totalitarianism,’ according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, is a policy that permits no rival loyalties or parties. This is plainly a very modern concept, which ill fits the Bronze Age. And to a modern reader, there are further accretions of association: one thinks of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, with secret police, purges, mass executions, and genocide. One crucial aspect of this could perhaps still be applied to Akhenaten’s Egypt: the most fundamental element of totalitarianism must be execution of opponents of the regime. The only requirement then is to name known victims of the ‘regime.’ None is known from Akhenaten’s reign. There is none. The totally inappropriate term also ignores the power of the pharaoh at all high periods of Egyptian history. It is simply the product of an antihistorical desire to be sensational.

For those with eyes to see, there are, indeed, many facts about the reign of Akhenaten that disprove any such fantasies about ‘totalitarianism.’ The most striking is the matter of religious orthodoxy. The new theology was very clear, and it was monotheistic, with the usual corollary that other gods were anathema. In most such cases, orthodoxy is imposed through control of texts and especially the elevation of one text above all others. Modern scholars have named one Amarnan text the Great Hymn, and even thought that it was written by Akhenaten himself. All of this is modern interpretation. There is, however, a so called Shorter Hymn (again a modern name) that survives in no fewer than five versions, and all showing endless variants. This is a very lax way to impose religious orthodoxy.

Another major piece of evidence for the nature of life at Amarna is the plan of the city. There are clear differences in the size and form of houses, reflecting the social distinctions of the inhabitants. It is striking, however, that there is no physical separation of the classes. Simple houses abut the grander, indicating social interaction. The city also shows no sign of any ‘master plan,’ which is extraordinary considering that it was a newly created capital. A characteristic feature of totalitarian regimes is highly regulated and exhibitionist town planning.

The variation in the plans of the rock tombs for the leading courtiers, although rarely mentioned, further demonstrates the presence of the individual in Akhenaten’s reign. This is all the more significant since the tombs were the gift of the king. It is also to be noted that no special measures were taken to conceal the tombs, suggesting a high level of stability in the country during the Amarnan period, or at least in the new capital and its environs.³⁶

What is known and what is not

It is amazing that so much fantasy is published about Amarna. One often hears that with ancient history the main problem is the lack of sources; we indubitably lack enough evidence to answer every question. Historians understand that this is simply a fact of life which has to be accepted. In the case of Amarna, however, we have a wealth of material:

    1.   the archaeological campaigns at Amarna from 1891, beginning with Petrie and predominantly by the British, but also the Germans;³⁷

    2.   the corpus of the Amarna Letters;

    3.   detailed illustrations of the tombs of Amarna published in six volumes by Norman de Garis Davies, and of the Royal Tomb published by Geoffrey Martin in two;

    4.   the excavations at Thebes from 1925, which reveal Akhenaten’s first five years; and

    5.   the hundreds of serious contributions in the most respected Egyptological journals of England, Germany, France, Belgium, Egypt, and America. Geoffrey Martin’s splendid bibliography (1991) drew on nearly four hundred such journal articles.

It would be absurd, then, to claim that we do not have enough to occupy serious historians. There are, on the other hand, many basic matters about which we know little or nothing. It is this fundamental contradiction which lies at the root of the ‘problem’ of Amarna. One needs patience to master the enormous amount of material on some things, and control to confront our ignorance on others.

What we do not know is one of the least frequently broached matters. The American anthropologist Leslie White (1900–75) took an extreme view in 1948:

The fact is that we know very little indeed about Ikhnaton as a political figure and virtually nothing about his personality and character. It is usually said that Amenhotep III was Ikhnaton’s father, but Newberry asserts that this is merely an assumption: this is nowhere asserted on any Egyptian inscription. Concerning the ancestry of other intimates of Ikhnaton—his wife, Nefertiti, his beloved coregent Smenkhkare, and his son in law and successor, Tutankhamun—nothing whatever is definitely known (Newberry). His age at the time of his accession has been much debated and is still uncertain. Evidence concerning his health and physical condition is so varied as to be virtually worthless. We do not know why he became estranged from his wife. We do not know how he met his death, whether from natural causes or by violence. And, finally, we do not know where he was laid to rest. If, therefore, we do not have adequate information of this sort, data on Ikhnaton as a king, a political institution, how could we expect to have any reliable information pertaining to his personality and character? Indeed, do we have any facts at all on this subject?³⁸

White went too far, but he was reacting against, in particular, Breasted and Arthur Weigall (1880–1934). He even needlessly added puzzles: Akhenaten’s supposed separation from Nefertiti—orthodoxy at the time—and the place of Akhenaten’s burial. In similarly exaggerated and paradoxical terms, Dominic Montserrat claimed that we cannot know what Akhenaten himself actually believed, despite voluminous records from the period.³⁹ Even William Murnane (1945–2000) wrote that the individual remains hidden behind the carefully crafted persona.⁴⁰

Of Nefertiti, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt (1913–2011) asserted that one cannot be sure . . . even of a single event in her life, except for her separation from the king and her move to the northern district of the town⁴¹—a ‘fact’ now, ironically, quite disproven. Dimitri Laboury has more recently made the fantastic assertion that we do not know what she looked like, because Rolf Krauss had deconstructed her famous Berlin bust and claimed that it was constructed according to an ideal graph: as if we had no other portrait of her, and as if the mature Nefertiti (fig. 85) were not the same person. For Dimitri Laboury, Nefertiti is no more than a personified function.⁴²

What is not known at present with any certainty about Akhenaten:

-   when he was born;

-   anything about his childhood, or adolescence, or education;

-   when his elder brother, the crown prince Thutmose, died;

-   how old he was when he came to the throne;

-   why he left Thebes; and

-   how old he was when he died (but he ruled for seventeen years).

Of Nefertiti, we do not know at present for certain:

-    where and when she was born (but she was Egyptian);

-   who her parents were (although a consensus is growing);

-   how she met Akhenaten; and

-   when she died and at what age.

Of Kiya, Akhenaten’s other known wife, we do not know fundamental matters, such as her origins, or when and how she died.

Of Smenkhkare, husband of the eldest princess, there is similarly no certainty as to his parents, when (or even if) he became coregent, or when and how he died.

Most of the above matters relate to the last five years of Akhenaten’s reign. The last dated event belongs to Year 12. The fate of all the main actors and of Atenism itself lies shrouded in darkness.

The only dated events or documents of the reign are:

Year 3: a letter from Kahun;⁴³

Year 4, II 3ḫt 7: a legal case;⁴⁴

Year 4, III 3ḫt 11: quarrying in the Wadi Hammamat;⁴⁵

Year 5, III šmw 19: letter from Gurob;⁴⁶

Year 5, IV šmw 13: the foundation of Amarna (the Earlier Proclamation on boundary stelae);⁴⁷

Year 6, IV 3ḫt 13: the Later Proclamation at Amarna;⁴⁸

Year 8, I prt 8: the renewed oath to the above;⁴⁹

Year 8, IV 3ḫt 30: the Colophon to the above;⁵⁰

Year 12, II prt 8: the ‘durbar’ (tomb of Huya);⁵¹

Year 2 or 12: Nubian War;⁵²

Years 1–17: dockets.⁵³

Some other vital matters—the dates of Akhenaten’s accession and of his change of name—have been deduced by modern ingenuity, as we shall see. Another ‘foundation-stone’ in Amarnan chronology, however, is anything but that: the change of the name of the Aten from its Earlier to Later form. This has long been—and continues to be—automatically dated to Year 9, although more recently it has been placed by some scholars as late as Year 14. Yet another caution relates to material found at Thebes. This is usually automatically dated to somewhere in Years 1–5: nothing was later than that (but see pp. 51, 197, 202).

Canadian anthropologist Bruce Trigger (1937–2006) has drawn attention to one of the most fundamental gaps in our knowledge: our understanding of the reign is dominated by Amarna, with some additions from Thebes in the first five years. In the absence of data from much of Egypt, definite conclusions regarding the king, his policies, and their success or failure cannot be reached with any confidence.⁵⁴

The ‘jigsaw’

One is used to viewing historical questions as a kind of jigsaw puzzle, in which one never has all the pieces. This is not the case with real jigsaws, where, unless someone has done something wicked, one knows that one has all the pieces, and that it is a matter of skill and patience to reconstruct the whole picture.

With the Amarnan jigsaw, there are many missing pieces, which makes putting the surviving pieces back together so much more difficult. Much more, however, is in play. Every now and again, someone offers a new, hitherto missing piece, which produces much excitement. The satisfaction is brief, however. Very soon someone else claims that the new piece has been quite misunderstood, or does not belong at all. Meanwhile, behind all this, others are busily working away at the pieces that do remain, trying to remove them from the picture or move them about into an entirely new position. To change the metaphor, it is as if historical evidence is like water running through one’s fingers.

As examples of contested evidence, every family tree of the later Eighteenth Dynasty is different. One would think when one has corpora delicti—and we have many of them⁵⁵—that modern methods of medical analysis to determine age at death and DNA analysis to determine relationships would solve many problems. To the contrary, despite the confident assertions of each new investigation, very little has gained universal approval (see further below).

Indeed, there is no statement in Amarnan studies which cannot be contradicted. A perfect example is that while almost everyone accepts that the smashing of Akhenaten’s sarcophagus in the Royal Tomb was the action of Amunist fanatics, Gabolde asserts, to the contrary, that it "seems more plausible that smashing this monument into such tiny pieces [my emphasis] was a way of preventing any reuse, and hence it should be considered a pious act rather than offending one."⁵⁶

He has, of course, undermined his own ‘case’ with his observation that the sarcophagus was smashed into "tiny pieces; Martin notes that, with few exceptions, none of the fragments is more than a few centimeters wide."⁵⁷ Who is more likely to have done this: supporters wanting simply to prevent its reuse, or fanatics wanting to obliterate every trace of the king? Gabolde’s sole argument is that the sarcophagus of Akhenaten’s mother, Tiye, was treated in the same way and this made no sense. Fanatics do not concern themselves with sense; if they did, the fact that she was buried at Amarna proves that Tiye must have been a hated Atenist.

And so much vital evidence is fragmentary, for example, the so-called Coregency Stela, which bears the cartouches of two kings, with the second pair recut over an earlier text. The question of recut inscriptions and reallocated objects, which is a continually recurring problem in Amarna, is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the coffin and canopic jars of KV 55.

As though all this were not enough, there is something else which overshadows all the rest: we were never meant to know anything about Akhenaten. His enemies intended that his existence and his times were to be blotted out from history.

And yet, beyond all that, there are very special influences operating here. The art of Amarna is so extraordinary that it excites very contrary responses, from ecstasy to repulsion. That, however, is nothing compared to the religious question. The possibility that Akhenaten was a monotheist and a precursor by centuries of any earlier similar theology makes him the object of enormous theological controversy. The epithet ‘heretic’ is commonly applied to him—as if the Egyptians could have entertained any such concept.⁵⁸ Heresy is willful theological error by an inducted member of a religion, such as a baptized Catholic. This is only possible where doctrine has been defined by the authority of the Church. One cannot have heresy before one has orthodoxy, and then one requires institutions which enforce it and identify those who diverge and punish them. From theology, controversy then spills over into the whole nature of Egyptian society at this time; Akhenaten constantly mentioned Maat (good order), yet for some, then and now, he was the greatest overthrower of ‘order’ in Egyptian history, and his successors claimed to be responsible for a ‘restoration.’ Sides are constantly taken on all these matters by moderns.

Fantasy

Akhenaten and his time have been treated, as Helck rightly described it, after the fashion of historical novels.⁵⁹ No fantasy has been too extreme. Evidence has often been the last thing required. The historian is, however, bound by certain ironclad rules. One of the most fundamental is that the duty of professional standards applies equally, whether one’s subject is someone living, who might bring a suit for libel, or someone who lived millennia ago.

We may single out three fantasies that have bedeviled Amarnan studies for decades. To my mind, without doubt, the most misleading was Percy Newberry’s (1868–1949) reassignment in 1928 of two reliefs, understood since their discovery to show Akhenaten and Nefertiti, to Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, with overtones of a homosexual relationship. It was not until 1973 that a number of scholars in concert reclaimed these two reliefs and thus enabled our modern understanding of Nefertiti’s importance.

The second most distracting episode in Amarnan studies, second only to the Newberry fantasy, was the claim by British excavators in the 1920s that Nefertiti had been disgraced. This was based on a total misreading of the archaeological record, corrected only in 1968 by Perepelkin, who read the erased name as that of Kiya.

A third major distraction, this time going back to Petrie, was the ‘coregency debate,’ which, not without precedent in the Eighteenth Dynasty, claimed that Akhenaten was coregent with his father, for anywhere between one and twelve years. The various theories were not cumulative evidence; each exclusively claimed to be right. The fact that almost twelve different answers could be given was surely an alarm signal, and Arielle Kozloff and Betsy Bryan made an illuminating observation: the supporters of the coregency were mostly art historians, whereas historians remained largely unconvinced.⁶⁰ The coregency theory dominated Amarnan scholarship for more than a century and is still held dear by a few researchers, but is now generally regarded by most historians as obsolete.

As John Wilson (1899–1976) warned, scholars have difficulty maintaining their objectivity when they deal with the personalities of the Amarna period.⁶¹ How, then, is one to make sense of Akhenaten and his reign? The most fundamental procedure of the historian is evaluation of sources. Those, of course, who are anxious about ancient historians not having enough remaining evidence easily overvalue what they have. Dearth of sources or superfluity makes no difference. Each source must be subjected to critical scrutiny. I cannot sufficiently express my amazement, for example, at the number of commentators who take as tendentious a text as Tutankhamun’s Restoration Stela—the rewriting of history by the next regime—as straightforward evidence for what happened under Akhenaten.

There is one tried and true method for making sense of the most contested areas of history: historiography. It requires knowledge of the historical debate and patience to peruse it, analyze it, make sense of it, and present it. One has to sort the contributors into their various schools of interpretation: this makes clear the trajectory of the debate and puts it into historical perspective, so that we can understand why ‘orthodox’ exposition and interpretation were as they were at any given time. More important than that, however, as one goes, one must be eagle eyed to collect any evidence that is offered. In this way, at the end, one has all the evidence that has been used by all the contributors, and that, gratifyingly, is bound to amount to more than any single one of them had. The historiographical method also makes one aware of the complexity of the possible interpretations, a matter often concealed by each author’s desire to promote his or her own answers. One must also be alert to the main sources of that evidence, so that one can then make one’s own check of it. In the case of Akhenaten, the main corpus of evidence is the excavations at Karnak and Amarna, which are available in more than half a dozen main works: by Petrie, Davies, Borchardt, Eric Peet, Henri Frankfort, John Pendlebury, Redford, and Barry Kemp.⁶²

Above all that, however, one cannot maintain—as is constantly done with questions of Akhenaten’s reign that have been controversial for more than a century—that there is a new and correct answer which suddenly trumps all previous answers. The likelihood of that is obviously slight. New evidence does appear from time to time, but experience shows that such novelties are frequently short-lived. All views and all evidence must be presented and analyzed. Only if one of them then has a greater degree of probability or plausibility should it be preferred, as every succeeding chapter will demonstrate. This may sound very unpromising, but, in fact, as the following pages will reveal, there are many occasions when such a preference may rationally be given. Its provisional nature must, however, at the same time be recognized.

Underlying the above method is a requisite philosophy. It springs from the last point and obviously causes great difficulty for many. Instead of claiming that one’s own dogmatically asserted views are the only correct ones, one must retrace the historical debate on each question in order to distinguish the false trails, on the one hand, and, on the other, the paths that have turned out to be the most fruitful. In other words, one is ever watchful to give credit to scholars who have brought us to wherever we are at present. Historians, of all people, understand the debts that are owed to the past.

There is one misunderstanding that must be laid to rest. Historiography might seem to some simply a cataloguing of other people’s ‘opinions.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. The investigator is in control at all times, sifting, categorizing, but most importantly organizing and accepting or rejecting: in short, reconstructing the debate and adjudicating. And what is demanded at every moment is the evidence on which the opinions are based. For the historian, sources are not ‘icing on the cake’ but the building blocks of history. They are either primary or secondary. The credibility of any secondary (modern) source depends entirely on the worth of the primary (ancient) sources quoted.

The eighteenth dynasty with its capital at Thebes, seat of the dynastic god Amun, was primarily a military monarchy, founded on the need to expel the Hyksos, who had occupied Lower Egypt. Its memorable kings had characteristically waged wars in Asia, not to